John de la Howe School

By Temple Ligon
August 9, 2013

Soon after the Revolutionary War, John de la Howe, a French physician, moved to Charleston and set up a medical practice. He was successful, and by 1785 he had bought about 2,000 acres between Long Crane Creek and the Little River in what is today the Sumter National Forest near McCormick, S. C. Here sits the John de la Howe School, founded in 1797 by de la Howe for orphaned children and a state agency since 1918.

The current population of almost 100 students lives on campus, a former plantation downsized to today’s 1,200 acres. The students range in grades from 6 to 12. From the 6th through the 10th grades the students attend class in the school on campus. For the 11th and 12th grades, the students attend class in McCormick County schools as part of their mainstreaming back into society.

Most of the children were guided away from their families due to violent disruptions at home or other impossible situations. Reportedly something like 65% have suffered sexual abuse. Most students stay enrolled at John de la Howe for about two years, after which their homes are determined suitably adjusted and are deemed safe and supportive for the students’ return.

During their two years at de la Howe, the students take the usual accredited courses heading for high school graduation, but de la Howe’s 1797 plan for the kids’ work schedule can still be found on campus. The students learn farming, equine handling, landscaping, greenhouse operation, and forestry preservation.

There is a wilderness program where the kids sleep in rustic shelters and essentially learn to live off the land. While toughing it, the participants learn to develop intensive group interdependency, a k a teamwork.

Also, the students run a vegetable farm which produces enough to stock something of a farmers market on campus.

Until recently there was a working dairy farm.

State funding is a little too tight, and the dairy farm’s plight is typical among many programs and structures. Not too long ago the John de la Howe School had almost 400 students, and their residential cottages, 12 altogether, are still around, maybe not in tip-top condition, but still around all the same.  Also very much still around are the chapel (sponsored by the McKissick family in Greenville), infirmary, family center, administration building and the complete John de la Howe School complex besides many other historic buildings.

A recent letter from Columbia lawyer Carlos Gibbons to the editors at The State newspaper complained that the demand for accommodation by another 300 students was not being met for reasons mostly tied to inadequate funding by the State of South Carolina. What managed up to 400 students in the near past can be updated to manage 400 students today, as Gibbons put it in other words. Gibbons shares his optimism in predicting the John de la Howe School expansion and eventual return to 400 students.

A larger student body could be made up of a larger out-of-state contingent, students paying higher tuition. The in-state tuition is based on family income, but it runs between $50 to $350 per month, and that could be doubled for the out-of-state students. Another means to new revenue and new students could be the day student, a transfer from the surrounding schools that don’t have the programs for the challenged child.

The Gibbons optimism has something to do with current research on the area of the human brain called the prefrontal cortex. Research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reveals the prefrontal cortex as undeveloped in children due to early childhood trauma. When the prefrontal cortex fails to develop, the child’s ability to determine good and bad, better and best, same and different is inadequate. The child flies off the handle far to severely and far too often for integration into the social mainstream. Now that there’s some understanding of what causes such outbursts, maybe a control or a correction is soon coming.

Institutions like the John de la Howe School can teach children the skills they lack with the understanding self-control is not learned. The absence of self-control is now being called a neurogenetic disorder, a by-product of which is lagging thinking skills.

On top of meeting a critical social need – that is, taking care of its student body and keeping the students safely away from their homes while they develop as educated and responsible young people – the John de la Howe School can be a laboratory and a research partner with Massachusetts General and other institutions to not only culture the whole students but to cure them of personality disorders from that early trauma.

For more information:
John de la Howe School, delahowe.k12.sc.us
Mass. Gen. prefrontal cortex research, thinkkids.org

Temple Ligon: [email protected]

 

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